Innholdsfortegnelse for June Vol. 57, No. 6 i High Country News

IF YOU COULD WALK THE ocean floor off the coast of Cape Arago in Oregon in the summer, you’d find yourself in the mysterious green depths of a forest of kelp. Look up, and you’d see sunlight filtering through the fronds waving in the current; look down, and you’d see the plants anchored to an ocean floor covered with life. But if you walked a little bit farther, you’d come to a barren clearing, no sign of kelp or much else — just a carpet of purple sea urchin, a creature that is devouring kelp at an alarming rate. The disappearance of kelp forests is widely felt here; gray whales have changed their foraging patterns, and the red abalone fishery in Northern California closed after swarms of urchins and warming…

THE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT team at the U.S. Forest Service employs about 1,500 people full-time, a small but mighty faction inside an agency that, until recently, was 35,000 strong. The research it conducts spans everything from managing visitors at recreation hotspots to understanding the pulse of life and land on the 193 million acres the agency manages. Since President Donald Trump took office, his barrage of executive actions in the name of curbing waste have imperiled the basic functions of federal agencies. At the Forest Service, the result is a climate of fear and uncertainty that’s stymieing the scientists working to fulfill the agency’s mission — sustaining the nation’s forests and grasslands for the public’s long-term benefit — just as the summer research field season ramps up. “Science and research…

S’EILTIN JAMIANN HASSELQUIST (SHE/THEY) (LINGÍT) Healer, aspiring Íxṯ’ Áak’w Ḵwáan, Juneau, Alaska I developed a three-layer system to help people connect with the land and the people of the land. One: Learn whose land you are on. Two: Learn how to say their traditional name, and what that name translates to. Three: Learn how to say “thank you” in that language. Lingít, Oyate, Diné — all of our names mean “people.” Indigenous people are older than the terms Native or Indigenous. We are the people; we are human. With this three-layer learning system, the message I am trying to get through asks you to see us as human, and to say, “Thank you.” Picking up those words shows that you respect us and want to learn — that you see…

A new Montana majority defangs the far right Disaffected Republicans and resurgent Democrats just took over the Montana Legislature and spent big on education and health care. By Gabriel Furshong Trump asks Congress to cut at the heart of the West The White House wants to alter life for U.S. hunters, anglers, RVers, off-road-vehicle drivers, backpackers, birdwatchers and hikers. By Christine Peterson Scan to read these stories and all our web-exclusive content. Follow us @highcountrynews…

IN EARLY MAY, House Republicans took the dramatic step of including sales of Western public land in a massive federal budget bill. The surprise proposal, which passed out of the House Natural Resources Committee, authorized the sale of nearly 500,000 acres of public land in Nevada and Utah. Introduced by Rep. Mark Amodei from Nevada and Rep. Celeste Maloy of Utah, the amendment generated immediate outrage from Democrats and conservation advocates. “Republicans’ plans to sell off our public lands to pay for tax handouts for their billionaire donors is an outrageous slap in the face to all of us,” New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, D, who sponsored an amendment blocking federal land sales, told High Country News in a statement. Several Western Republicans joined in the backlash, enough to torpedo…

IN THE SPRING OF 1987, Cathy Holdorf and her husband, John, drove to the end of a gravel road in Soap Creek, Oregon, a rural community 10 miles north of Corvallis. Here, where the smooth spread of the Willamette Valley begins to buckle against the Coast Range, they’d come to look at a property for sale: 30 acres of oak savanna draped over a south-facing hillside. They parked at the foot of the hill and set out walking. The lower land was intriguing — iron-doored bunkers from a World War II-era training camp cut into the earth and a creek ran nearby — but it wasn’t until they climbed the slope that they knew they’d found what they were looking for. On a knoll partway up a ridge called Poison…

IDAHO Keep your shirts on, Idahoans, and better remove those dangling faux scrotums called “truck nuts” from your trailer hitches, or else find them some little truck-hitch briefs. Gov. Brad Little, R, signed House Bill 270, an update to Idaho’s indecent exposure law, and it went into effect almost immediately — through an emergency clause, mind you — back in March. If you’ve ever needed clarification about what cannot be bared in public — at least in Idaho — the revisions are specific, if somewhat fixated on certain secondary sexual characteristics, i.e., “female breasts, male breasts altered to look like female breasts” and/or “artificial breasts,” as well as “toys or products that resemble genitals,” the Idaho Capital Sun reports. Breastfeeding in public is still legal (for now, anyway). The updates…

ON AN EARLY spring day, California Solar Electric Cooperative workers gathered at a local food co-op in Grass Valley, California, for a company meeting. Posters celebrating cooperative principles decorated the walls; one, proclaiming “Democratic Member Control,” showed ants working together to carry a bright green fern leaf. Some of the electricians filtered in late, having come straight from a job site. “We want to take a moment to recognize some amazing people in our co-op,” said Melanie Duggan, a senior project manager at Cal Solar, which installs rooftop solar and battery systems. Duggan and other managers then praised their colleagues’ “commitment to craft” and “pure fucking magic” — core values of the company. Workers cheered and clapped after each shout-out. This supportive culture is at the heart of Cal Solar.…

WHEN ROSE MCADOO visits a glacier, she doesn’t just bring a harness, rope and crampons. She brings a portable camp stove, sugar, powdered whole milk and heavy cream, and a gelatin substitute called agar. The glacier will also become an ingredient. McAdoo is a dessert artist, and one of her favorite desserts to make on, and with, a glacier is panna cotta. First, she mixes glacial runoff with her ingredients, then brings the mixture to a boil before letting it cool and adding spirulina — a blue algae powder — to achieve various shades of blue. The surrounding snow acts as McAdoo’s refrigerator, where the mixture sets in molds for up to two days. Once it’s ready, McAdoo whips egg whites, sugar and cream of tartar by hand into a…

At High Country News, we know that journalism has the power to spark enduring change. We believe that there is strength in community, and we know that shared stories connect us all. HCN needs our reporters on the ground — now more than ever. The stakes are high, not just for communities across the West, but for millions of acres of public and tribal lands, and for our region’s climate and wildlife. Lasting solutions for Western communities and landscapes can only come from an informed public and sustained, honest civic dialogue. Thank you for helping our critical work continue! Donate today to fuel tomorrow’s stories. We’re in this together. Give Online hcn.org/support Give by Phone 800-905-1155…